izigame.me

Original review exceeded Steam's word limit, so here's a synthesized version.
By far the most enjoyable ACE Team game, for me!
I've replayed the first two Zeno Clash games in preparation for this, and the gameplay is vastly improved in every way. It's bolder and better.
The combat is less unique, but more fun.
The writing, disappointingly, doesn't really take the Zenozoik story in any new direction, but it is a much more eloquent treatment of the same themes, with tenuous connections to the other games. Certainly much better for new players, but I would have really liked to see more movement to the Zenozoik story - guess I'll have to wait for a sequel.
Visually, too, it's far better, although I am not fully on board with the style - while I love the textural feel of it, it feels a bit *too* textural for a Zenozoik game, which relied more on quirky and identifiable models, if that makes sense.
The music is very unique, and quite good, but once again feels a bit off for Zenozoik. The previous games used unique "ethnic" instruments to convey the culturally-alien (Xeno) nature of the games, which I really liked.
This time around, voice and piano are very prominent - the voice is cool and unconventional, but the piano takes out some of the alien feeling, to me.
Now, brief discussion around specific subjects:
--- Souls-like & Exploration ---
I feel like this is a misleading labelling. The game is neither difficult nor mechanically deep. What it does take from Souls, however, is the open level-design and the lack of a GPS system. I love this, and exploration was by far my favourite part of the game.
The whole world is fully connected, and you need to rely on (and develop) your navigational skills alone, not following an icon on a map. Many paths are initially closed off, in each area, but you will open them up as you explore (in the riskier night form) as well as the connecting shortcuts across areas.
The areas are very... maze-like, which is a positive and a negative.
On the plus side, it's really cool to map out in your head and explore when you reach a new area, for sure. There is also a lot to collect in every nook and cranny (equipment, ingredients, stance and attacks, upgrades, etc.).
On the minus side, it's a pain to backtrack through, and this really hurts the "end/post-game" if you're one to look for optional bosses and equipment. While in Dark Souls you're navigating very distinct areas, most of the time (ruins, buildings, etc.), here, being mostly "alien nature", it is difficult to remember where things were. Plus, when exploring the first time, it's easy to identify where you have been before (since everything is collected), but once you return, most things have already been picked up, so it can become more confusing.

--- Skill points, Difficulty ---
This is an interesting design problem that I did not expect to have.
In Dark Souls, souls are the currency for everything, and they are risky to carry with you, since you lose them upon death. This makes levelling up very encouraged.
In here, you level up through XP and keep your skill points for ever. This made me hold on to them. "Too good to use syndrome". By the end of the game, I had spent maybe 30 points, and had 90 points leftover, unspent.
This brings me to discuss difficulty - the game is far too easy, after first few hours. It undervalues every other system in the game. Equipment will maybe give you 20-30 extra points, at most.
Potion brewing, too, was too subtle and problematically opaque (next section) to be relevant.
Weapons could be used, but their lack of integration into the combos made them awkward to use.
And worst of all, this lack of difficulty applies also to the optional dark bosses. I also feel like optional content is a great opportunity to force players to delve deep into the game's system, to demand them to learn and use everything to their advantage in order to overcome the challenge. None of that here, a wasted opportunity.
--- Crafting and Brewing ---
This is a huge design problem.
You get crafting materials from enemies and use them to purchase equipment and ritual upgrades. Enemies respawn "infinitely" so you never run out of materials; but shops' stocks are limited, they have a finite use.
You get ingredients by gathering them in the world, but they do *not* respawn, so they have a finite supply. But, depending on how well you play, how much you explore, you may need to craft many potions. Beyond that, the brewing system is extremely opaque and unclear, making blind trial and error a necessity to learn it. You can imagine how blind experimentation and finite supply can go wrong.
I don't know how this happened, but wires got crossed. Crafting supplies, having finite demand, could have had finite supply.
Brewing ingredients, with infinite demand, should have had infinite supply.
The low difficulty makes this largely irrelevant, but still.
--- Ritual ---
Neat idea in theory, not at all workable in practice.
This is a mini-game you can play before some fights. It's a dice game, the winner gets to apply a penalty on the opponent.
It has neat connections to the narrative (and is used with a great intent in one area of the game), so I would have loved for it to work.
However - the benefits are rather subtle, it's not a very safe bet that you'll win the ritual, and it's very slow. Its most likely use would be in tough fights, but these are the ones whose opponents also have correspondingly better ritual "abilities", and the ones you may have to retry a few times. Replaying the ritual in such situations seems to waste more time than it aids you, not only may you end up with a penalty yourself, but it's a significant amount of extra time between retries.
The result is that, from what I've read, most players (myself included), just decided not to use the Ritual at all, after the first couple of hours, once the novelty has worn off.
So it is one more system that becomes irrelevant. Again, neat idea in theory, but didn't quite work.
--- Writing and Story ---
I'm a huge fan of Jonas Kyratzes (although I have not played the Talos Principle yet; my familiarity is mostly through his own indie games, and ACE Team collaborations).
In a way, he didn't disappoint - the dialogue is far better, ideas are expressed beautifully, and often very funny.
Unfortunately, the themes end up being largely similar to those of previous games. It's a full new game that doesn't really add much to the world of Zenozoik. It kind of moves in place. This sense was very disappointing.
I must give credit to three little sections:
- I loved the monologue of Word; not just how it related to the previous games and the role of his character, but also for the idea it made much clearer, to me, about the relation between anarchy, anarchism, and historical memory.
- There was also a subtle line about the "mythology of when the stars changed"; this only makes sense for those who've played Zeno Clash 2, I think, but it plays brilliantly with the last point of historical memory.
- The ending was great, especially in the role and kind of love between Pseudo and the Boy. I am one to care not at all for plots and resolutions, in most games (they are usually vehicles for themes and ideas and not as important in themselves, in my mind), but I must say that it was both unexpected and significant to the ideas of power, control, and, of course, love.
--- Conclusion ---
All in all, a huge improvement over the previous games, and a very enjoyable game.
Design-wise, it is far from water-tight, but nothing that hurts it too much, at least for one playthrough.
It adds little to the previous games in the series, in terms of story, but it does a much better job of addressing the same themes.
I'd expect it to be a great entry for beginners to the series (a lot less janky), and I'm sure it will be enjoyable to veterans, even if it ends up disappointing the expectations set at the end of ZC2.